A Tea Party Huzzah for Health Insurers

The Heathcaristas in TBO's Socialist administration may be turning cartwheels to the point of dizzying the liberal media.  It doesn't take much to figure their misguided glee.

WellPoint.

No, not Good Point, but there's a beacon of goodness for all adherents of the Tea Party of Wonderland ("TP")

WellPoint is a big health insurance company, with 33 million insureds.  Many had though the name meant something about making people well, but, it turns out, it has everything to do with only intelligently incentivizing women who stay well.

Seems the huge, free-market health insurer borrowed some unemployed computer programer from Lehman's and cooked up an algorithm--computer-speak for a routine that figures certain things out on its own--that plucked out, from WellPoint's millions of paid-up policy holders anybody who no longer did not have breast cancer.  Having done that, algorithm raised a little pink flag next to all those names and went back looking for more.

The next step was left to tireless WellPoint staffers, TP'ers themselves perhaps, who sent pink slip-like notices out to the flagged women, stuck on a pink Post-it on those files and passed along them to magnifying-glass-wielding file-reading specialists.  Those intrepid, if strained-eyed, gallants scrutinize the pink-Post-it'ed policy applications for omissions, errors or downright misspellings to justify the previously sent cancellations.

WellPoint's CEO, Angela "Pinkie" Braly, surely gets a bonus based on such algorithms.  And she should. Wellpoint's charter does not mention justice, welfare or blessings and the corporation mission should not be diverted by such preamblings.  WellPoint's precept is singular, as is Pinkie's job:  Profit.  Pure and simple.  Women with breast cancer are bad risks for any insurance company.  They will almost certainly cost more than a woman whose worst complaint is a weekend of Viagra.

As you the critics out there, ask yourself this, and think of it as your money at risk:  Would you insure a sick person against getting sick?  They're already sick, for God's sake.  No one can expect you to insure someone who is guaranteed to require a big reserve before she pays her second premium. Taking a risk, you could live with that, but a known sure thing headed the wrong way? That's not insurance, that's a bottom-line uglier than a quart of Pepto.  It's flaming, bonus-blotting red.

So, don't you flinch, Pinkie. In the Tea Party of Wonderland's Kool-Aid pinned eyes, you are a superstar!  You are what TP was invented for.

And, Pinkie?  Don't wear a ribbon when go to get your well-deserved, if ironic, Teabagger of the Quarter Award from Alice Palin.